August 2021 – Drinking from a Water Hose

August 6, 2021 Jeanne at No Rhyme or Reason Farm Chester County, Farm, Garden, Homestead

The beginning of August is rough around here. It’s like drinking from a water hose – too much, too fast, all at once.

The tomatoes (yes…45 tomato plants) give me about six to ten pounds of tomatoes per day – some are paste tomatoes, some are slicing tomatoes with a few are cherry tomatoes thrown in for variety. I have three varieties of green beans and pick about two to three pounds per day. The zucchini – well, let’s just say I can’t even keep track of them. The cucumbers get hacked up every day or two and turned into pickles. The beets are pickled, the onions are drying, the cantaloupe and carrots are still growing. And our freezer is full.

It gets pretty intense trying to keep up with all of this. It takes a minimum of two hours early each morning to pick whatever is ripe. It takes longer if the weeds bother me enough to make the time to start pulling them out.

There is a lot growing this time of year.

And then there are hours in the kitchen to freeze the beans, turn tomatoes into spaghetti sauce and pickle the beets.

I’m not complaining, we are fortunate to be rewarded with a good harvest (what the groundhog didn’t eat). But it would be just a little bit easier if it wasn’t everything at one time.

July 2021 – Scaredy Cats

July 23, 2021 Jeanne at No Rhyme or Reason Farm Chester County, Farm, Homestead

We added two barn cats to the farm about a month ago. Toby and Teddy spent three weeks in a double-decker cat condominium/cage in the barn so they could become acclimated to their new surroundings. Moving from the SPCA to a barn with all the noises that a horse and four goats make – could be a bit disconcerting until you get used to it. We fed them every day, gave them fresh water and clean litter and talked with them so they’d get to know us.

We were apprehensive about the release day approaching as we’ve tried this before and the cats took off so fast they were like a blur on the way out (one eventually came back a week later and stayed with us for three years). This time, we opened the door and these two refused to leave.

We started feeding them outside of the cage to entice them to come out, we set up a cat igloo so they’d still have a place to live, and finally we took the cage out of the barn. They still refused to leave. Finally, this weekend, they started making short expeditions outside the barn – but only if they were together. They are just as happy to go back inside the barn, lay on the straw and wait for feeding time.

I hope they’ll soon get the idea that they are supposed to be on mouse patrol – but so far, they won’t even venture into the pasture to meet Pono (the horse) and Peter, Heidi, Beauty and HeiHei (the goats).

The “herd” enjoying the pasture but no cats in sight.

July 2021 – Groundhog War

July 19, 2021 Jeanne at No Rhyme or Reason Farm Chester County, Farm, Garden, Homestead, Uncategorized

I believe in live and let live. In general, we love the wildlife on the farm – the deer, the birds, the squirrels, the rabbits. What I don’t love, is wildlife in my garden. Each of my gardens is surrounded by fencing. Of the three gardens, two have six foot tall fencing, the third garden has a picket fence. As it turns out, it’s not the height that a problem, but rather the groundhog that’s digging under the fence.

I have corn, squash, pumpkins and cantaloupe growing in that garden. Actually, I “had” corn, squash, pumpkins and cantaloupe growing in that garden. It’s been decimated. The corn has been knocked down and the squash has been nibbled on – not completely eaten, just half of each – so I can’t use it. The cantaloupe leaves and vines have been eaten to the point that there isn’t much but stubble left.

I don’t expect the groundhog to starve. There is plenty to eat around here. In fact, there is a squash that volunteered from last year and popped up outside one of the other gardens – free for the picking. I even planted a pumpkin patch on the front hillside with some left-over plants. But I guess they don’t taste good without a challenge.

At first we tried blocking the groundhog tunnels with rocks. He just dug a new tunnel. We added reinforced chicken wire as a “bib” at the bottom of the picket fence that extends a good foot or so into the yard and nailed it all down with U-pins. He just started digging further out and made a longer tunnel.

Every day there was more damage, until we gave up and got a have-a-heart trap. We set the trap with cantaloupe (apparently one of his favorites) – and within hours, Gus the Groundhog was on his way to a park far away from here.

Truly, I hate to do this. I’m sure Gus has a family here, and I don’t like to upset the balance of nature. But, we actually rely on our gardens for food throughout the year. Winter squash is one of my favorites! I don’t have to freeze it, I don’t have to can it – it just goes in the basement and lasts all winter long. Squash will be a rarity this winter. I have five left (if Gus doesn’t come back). He already ate 23. He had to go.

Merry Christmas

December 24, 2020 Jeanne at No Rhyme or Reason Farm Chester County, Christmas

It has been a different kind of year, but still – the house is festive, Arianna and Hannah decorated the cookies, we made our trip to see Santa and the Nativity, and Hannah enjoyed her Frosty cupcake as the snow melted outside. We are enjoying the joys of the season and settling in to await Santa’s arrival. From our home to yours – we send our best wishes for a very Merry Christmas and a happy, HEALTHY and much different/better 2021!

August – Arts and Crafts and a lot of Pizza

August 19, 2020 Jeanne at No Rhyme or Reason Farm Chester County, Garden, Uncategorized

We are always digging up “treasures” around here – broken glass, pieces of barbed wire, an old button. Every once in a while there is something a little more significant – a horse shoe, an old padlock, a drainage grate. As they say on Oak Island, a “top-pocket find” if it could fit it in a pocket. I hate to throw this trash away. It somehow belongs on the farm. So I came up with another of my crazy ideas that makes Chris roll his eyes – mostly because I needed his help.

I decided I need stepping stones in the garden. A square pizza box is just about the right size for a stepping stone – so after polishing off a pizza with mushrooms on Chris’ half, we got busy. He mixed the cement, I sorted through the box of “treasures” and created our first – of many more to come – stepping stones.

I have a lot of broken glass in all shades of the rainbow – from green to purple to blue to amber. I have old hinges, door latches and bucket handles. I don’t have a lot of pizza boxes. So every time we eat a pizza, we need a bag of cement. It may take a while, but eventually I’ll have the most unique garden walkway – ever.

A horse shoe, some odds and ends – and we have our first stepping stone.

The cat signed her name on the left. I added 2020, because what else do you do during quarantine other than make up silly stepping stones. It’s a good excuse to eat more pizza – I need a few more to cover the walkway.

July – Maybe I should just buy fruit?

July 16, 2020 Jeanne at No Rhyme or Reason Farm Chester County, Farm, Fruit Trees, Garden, Homestead, Uncategorized

Last year I tried plastic bags on my apples and grapes, but they got hot in the sun, created condensation, and the fruit I was trying to protect – rotted.

This year I made little mesh bags with drawstrings to protect our harvest. I made larger ones for the grapes, and little ones for the apples. I didn’t have to make that many though. I have one apple – yes ONE – on each of three apple trees. Despite a nice showing of apple blossoms, a late frost and snow flurries put an end to the apple harvest this year – almost spitefully leaving one apple of each variety so we can taste what we are missing. Before any more mishaps can befall my apples – I put each one in its own drawstring net bag.

I did the same with our crop of grapes – because I have yet to successfully get any grapes from these vines. This year is doubtful as well as we have spotted lantern flies, and they particularly like grapes. I covered each little cluster in its own little bag.

We also have 5 peaches hanging precariously on two peach trees – I covered them too. The raspberries and blueberries are were safely covered with bird netting over PVC frames. We got some blueberries this year, but the plants are still young. The raspberries have been the star of the fruit show this year – with a bowl full every day, but even they are slowing down in the heat of the summer.

Now all I can do is wait – or go to the grocery store.

And some bags for the bunches of grapes too!

July – New members of the farm family

July 3, 2020 Jeanne at No Rhyme or Reason Farm Chester County, chickens, Farm, Homestead, Uncategorized

We’ve added five more members to the farm family. After the problems we have each year when we do this, I’m surprised we both said – Yes, let’s do this insanity again.

We added five chickens to our existing flock of nine. Right now things are peaceful. The new peeps are living in a big crate in the garage. They have their own space, a heat lamp for the cool evenings and they are happy as can be. That’s because they don’t know about the chicken drama that will happen when we introduce them to the older hens. It’s never a good thing.

We added a lot of outdoor chicken run space so there is plenty of room for the 14 of them to spread out. We give them plenty of kitchen scraps, fresh water, cracked corn every afternoon for a treat and a coop full of clean wood shavings every week. You’d think everyone would be happy. But no, hens are never happy when you introduce new peeps into their territory. Maybe there is safety in numbers and having a flock of five newbies might go better than last year when we introduced two new chicks. We’ll wait until these chicks are almost as large as the hens and devise a temporary fence with chicken wire to keep the new chicks separate (and safe) for a couple of weeks until everyone gets to know each other – and then one night after dark, we’ll slip the new chicks in with the old hens in the roost and hope for the best.

They are so cute when they are little balls of fluff.

Now they are starting to look like real chickens – I just hope they can hold their own when we put them in with the old hens.

June – Two Tomatoes

July 1, 2020 Jeanne at No Rhyme or Reason Farm Chester County, Tomatoes, Uncategorized

Yes – I picked two tomatoes already – right at the end of June. But this year, I am also trying two different ways of growing tomatoes to see which works better. So far, I can’t tell.

The tomatoes in the garden on the east side of the house are growing on strings that help to keep them tall as they climb higher and higher. The tomatoes in the garden on the west side of the house are in traditional tomato cages. And they’re doing just fine too. They are both setting fruit and so far I picked one tomato from each garden.

I’ll probably weigh how many tomatoes I get from each garden so I can compare which side did better by the end of the year – but it’s not a fair comparison. The ones on the east side get more sun, got planted too early and were stunted by the Mother’s Day cold snap and are planted in rocky soil. The ones on the west side get afternoon shade, were planted once the weather had warmed up, and the soil is much nicer. So it might be difficult to say whether strings or cages make a difference. So far, I think I like the strings, even though it takes a bit of time to always keep the top of the plant twisted around the string – but it’s easier to move about between the plants. In the end, as long as I have enough tomatoes to put-up a lot of tomato sauce, pizza sauce, vegetable soup – and make a summer’s worth of BLT sandwiches – I don’t really care whether they were grown on strings or in cages!

The garden looks like a plumbers paradise with pvc piping running up and down and across. The perfect frame to tie my strings so the tomatoes can climb.

I just keep wrapping the top of the tomato around the string as it grows.

And the tomatoes in the cages are just doing their own thing.

June – It’s Sticky around here

June 24, 2020 Jeanne at No Rhyme or Reason Farm Beekeeping, Chester County, Honey, Uncategorized

Two weeks ago the hives were getting full of honey. We had 15 frames that were ready to extract, so Saturday morning we set up all the equipment and got to work. By the end of the day, we had 45 pounds of honey. That’s a lot of honey. But wait, there’s more…

This Saturday we did it again. We got another 60 pounds of honey. That’s 105 pounds so far this year. But wait, there’s even more…

The Linden trees are blooming and they are covered with honey bees. We’ll probably be extracting more honey in another week or two. So far, the honey we have extracted is VERY light – a white clover honey from all the clover flowers growing in the yard. It will be interesting to see if the Linden honey is as light, and how the flavor differs. But you know what they say… don’t count your honey until you have it in your jars (or something like that), so I don’t want to predict what the outcome might be.

Linden tree blossoms also make a very nice tea, so just in case we don’t get Linden honey, I picked some of the blossoms from a low hanging branch (along with the bract leaves attached to the blossom), dried them in the dehydrator and ground them up into tea. Some chilly night this fall, I’ll have a cup of Linden blossom tea – hopefully with a spoonful of Linden honey to go with it.

A gorgeous frame fresh out of the hive and packed with honey.

Once the wax coating is cut off the top, the frames go into the centrifuge extractor.

The wax we cut off the top gets saved and we will melt it down – maybe we’ll make candles one day.

Into the dehydrator they go to get dried out to make tea.

May – Finally!

May 28, 2020 Jeanne at No Rhyme or Reason Farm Chester County, Farm, Garden, Homestead, Uncategorized

We had snow flurries two weeks ago. This week it’s 80 degrees. It’s been a rough spring – cold and wet and dreary. It made it hard to get my garden started. Not strong on patience, I jumped the gun, planted some of the things I had raised in the greenhouse too early – and lost them to the early May frost (even though I tucked them in with warm blankets, plastic tarps and up-side down buckets to help them through the cold nights). But…I guess that’s why I “accidentally” grew 248 tomato plants – I had a few extras.

The gardens look amazing, the weeds have been (temporarily) banished, and there is still space between the rows. In another month it will look like a jungle out there. Let the growing season begin!